In the pharmaceutical industry, a feed assembly is known comprising a metering station for feeding a given number of tablets into the bottom shell of a capsule; a dispenser plate mounted to rotate about a first longitudinal axis at an angle of other than zero with respect to a substantially vertical direction, and having at least one set of metering holes, each of which houses at least one tablet and is fed by the dispenser plate through the metering station; a fixed annular plate mounted beneath the dispenser plate to normally close the metering holes, and having an opening at the metering station; and a feed disk mounted beneath the dispenser plate to rotate about a substantially vertical second longitudinal axis, and comprising, for each set of metering holes, a feed channel along which the relative tablets are fed into a relative bottom shell.
Given the relatively large number of metering holes in each set, and the fact that each metering hole may be designed to house even more than one tablet, known feed assemblies of the above type have various drawbacks, mainly due to each feed channel receiving a relatively large number of tablets simultaneously at the metering station, and so becoming clogged.